Friday, February 22, 2013

How To Writing, Question-Answer Freebie

My fabulous team was discussing how we don't tend to love teaching the How To writing genre at this time because last year the students' writing in last quarter became less detailed after we completed the unit.The students included the basic steps of how to do something (make a sandwich, build a snowman, get ready for school, etc), but there just wasn't a ton of elaboration or careful word selection any longer.After we'd spent SO much time teaching and conferring about elaboration and details!Of course, some writing was more delightful to read than others, but in general, the overall quality of our student's writing went down.I didn't like dreading a new genre, so I decided to visit the local library to find some better mentor texts. So glad I did - I'm now super excited to get started on the genre this year! Here are some of the hilarious books the children's librarian helped me find!With these elaborated and delightful mentor texts, I believe our writing will be a LOT more solid!!!Plus, read aloud time will be a hoot!AFTER we're done with How To writing, we're beginning Question Answer books...so I whipped up this little freebie.Students will make inferences in order to match the question card with its answer and then record the matching pair on the recording page.Enjoy!

I'd be SUPER grateful if you left me some

TpT feedback!

The cover graphic is for St. Patrick's Day, but you can really use this center at any time of year since the cards and recording page graphics are more neutral.

And, finally for the winners of...

Don't forget to download the Preview of Common Core Crunch - it includes three freebie pages from the pack!

Thanks Lisa! I'm so excited about winning the letter writing unit; we're starting that in two weeks!!

Also, I am totally with you on the How-To thing. Our district had us start the year with informational writing....nice, right? Thank you for sharing those fun looking books. I'm headed to Amazon right now!

I read How to Babysit a Grandpa right before our school's Grandparents' Day. The students wrote their own directions and the grandparents loved it! We also made a list of what everyone called their grandparents - it was interesting to see all of the different names!

Love your posts, as always! I completely agree about How To writing. I've had the same experience! Thanks so much for sharing these books! They look really fun I've got a Barnes & Noble gift card burning a hole in my pocket!

Thanks for sharing this cute activity! We've been reviewing writing dialogue and I'll use these at a station and have my kiddos write answers with quotations in them!

Congrats on coming up to 500 followers! Let me know if you need help celebrating! I'd be happy to donate something!Linda

Meet the Author

I teach, live and love in beautiful Wisconsin (Go Badgers!). First graders have had my heart for a while here, but I've been a reading specialist and have taught sixth, fourth and third, too. You can reach me at growingfirsties@gmail.com. Thanks a bunch for your visit!